While writing Friday’s blog post “
Aligning Your Product Support Strategy and Life Cycle Sustainment Plan (LCSP)”, I came across a statement in
Chapter 4 of the Defense Acquisition Guidebook that reads: “…in this chapter, the terms “sustainment” and “product support” are used synonymously.”
While they were used synonymously in that particular chapter, speaking for myself, I am not convinced that the two terms are in fact entirely synonymous. While the terms product support and sustainment are often used interchangeably -- and to a large degree they overlap -- there are several significant differences. Product support spans the system life cycle from requirements to disposal (e.g., is inextricably linked to life cycle management as outlined in
10 U.S.C. 2337 aptly titled “Life Cycle Management and Product Support”), including the integration with systems engineering, design interface and designing for supportability aspect during system design and development. Indeed, the
statute clearly states “The term "product support" means the package of support functions required to field and maintain the readiness and operational capability of major weapon systems, subsystems, and components, including all functions related to weapon system readiness.”
Sustainment, on the other hand, is more narrowly defined from an operational perspective in
Joint Publication 3-0 as “the provision of logistics and personnel services to maintain operations through mission accomplishment and redeployment of the force”, without the same degree of acquisition, life cycle, or total life cycle systems management aspects.
In fact, J.P. 3-0 goes on to state that “the sustainment function includes tasks to: (1) Coordinate the supply of food, operational energy (fuel and other energy requirements), arms, munitions, and equipment. (2) Provide for maintenance of equipment. (3) Coordinate and provide support for forces, including field services; personnel services support; health services; mortuary affairs; religious support (RS); postal support; morale, welfare, and recreational support; financial support; and legal services. (4) Build and maintain contingency bases. (5) Assess, repair, and maintain infrastructure. (6) Acquire, manage, and distribute funds. (7) Provide common-user logistics support to other government agencies, international organizations, NGOs, and other nations. (8) Establish and coordinate movement services. (9) Establish large-scale detention compounds and sustain enduring detainee operations.”
While inculcating many aspects of sustainment, what sets product support apart in my mind are a number of key aspects of product support that the joint definition of sustainment does not address, including:
- the acquisition aspects, including but by no means limited to program office, program manager, and program executive officer oversight,
- “cradle to grave” life cycle management,
- systems management, regardless of whether we’re talking weapon, business, space or software systems,
- acquisition activities, including but by no means limited to such activities as analysis of alternatives, materiel solutions analysis, system design and development, market research, engineering development, life cycle cost management, test & evaluation, supportability analysis, reliability growth, and manufacturing and production, among a myriad of others,
- product support strategy and product support package development,
- integration of the multi-disciplinary Integrated Product Support (IPS) Elements,
- product support arrangement development and execution, including sustainment key performance parameter (KPP), product support metrics,
- sustaining engineering decisions including repair verses replace decisions along wtih system demilitarization and disposal decision
- executed by life cycle logistics functional community, which is defined by the DoD Logistics Human Capital Strategy (HCS) as “…the planning, development, implementation, and management of a comprehensive, affordable, and effective systems support strategy. Life cycle logistics encompasses the entire system’s life cycle including acquisition (design, develop, test, produce and deploy), sustainment (operations and support), and disposal. The work translates force provider performance specifications for system operational availability and readiness into tailored product support, designed to deliver specified and evolving logistics support performance capability parameters. Life Cycle Logistics shapes all the functions of logistics into product support that spans the entire system life cycle...”
- product support activities are overseen by a statutorily authorized and officially-designated Product Support Manager (PSM) responsible for achieving the product support responsibilities outlined in 10 U.S.C. 2337.
Viewed holistically, these activities form the basis of total life cycle systems management (TLCSM), another foundational aspect that differentiates product support from sustainment. Logically, this means product support serves as the overarching construct under which sustainment activities ultimately fall.
To a degree, you can see the same differentiation play out when it comes to
life cycle logistics functional community verses the more broadly-based supply, transportation/deployment/distribution and maintenance aspects of the so-called “Big L” logistics (for additional context, encourage you to read through the
2019 DoD Logistics Human Capital Strategy (HCS). You can also see it illustrated in the integration of acquisition, requirements management and PPBE systems into what is often referred to as “Big A” acquisition.
Despite the differences, the reality, of course, is there is substantial alignment, integration, and between the terms “product support” and “sustainment”. If depicted graphically, it would probably best be depicted as an overlapping Venn diagram. Certainly as a minimum, the overlap would very likely include things such as maintenance planning and management, supply chain management, sustaining engineering, technology insertion, system modification and upgrades, software updates, obsolescence and DMSMS management, among others. Indeed,
Chapter 4 of the Defense Acquisition Guidebook declares that sustainment is “a distributed and long-term activity that requires the alignment of the program office, requirements community, systems engineers, sustainment commands, logistics community, resource sponsors, and others.”
Several other related definitions might also prove to be helpful in illustrating the subtle differences in terminology:
- Product Support.-The term "product support" means the package of support functions required to field and maintain the readiness and operational capability of major weapon systems, subsystems, and components, including all functions related to weapon system readiness. (Source: 10 U.S.C. 2337)
- Integrated Product Support (IPS) - A key life cycle management enabler, IPS is the package of support functions required to deploy and maintain the readiness and operational capability of major weapon systems, subsystems, and components, including all functions related to weapon systems readiness. The package of product support functions related to weapon system readiness, which can be performed by both public and private entities, includes the tasks that are associated with the Integrated Product Support (IPS) Elements which scope product support. (Source: DAU Glossary)
- Total Systems Approach - The Program Manager shall be the single point of accountability for accomplishing program objectives for total life-cycle systems management, including sustainment. The PM shall apply human systems integration to optimize total system performance (hardware, software, and human), operational effectiveness, and suitability, survivability, safety, and affordability. PMs shall consider supportability, life cycle costs, performance, and schedule comparable in making program decisions. Planning for Operation and Support and the estimation of total ownership costs shall begin as early as possible. Supportability, a key component of performance, shall be considered throughout the system life cycle. (Source: DoD Directive 5000.01, Para E1.1.29.)
So let me conclude this admittedly lengthy blog post by posing a few final questions as food for thought:
- What do you think? Does this make sense?
- Do you agree that the terms product support and sustainment, while overlapping, are not entirely synonymous?
- If so, do you also agree that that weapon system sustainment is a subset of product support?
